I'd bet $10 that the image was created on a Mac and saved without a .jpg extension. Can't wait for the link that proves this and the headline is about how a Mac broke a Mazda over the air.

Ars Technia: Radio station snafu in Seattle bricks some Mazda infotainment systems.

"The problem, according to Mazda, was that the radio station sent out image files in its HD radio stream that did not have extensions"

If you say "website dot com" when it's a .com.au, you're a boomer.

The painting was defaced by a security guard who added two pairs of eyes to the painting 😂

Why?!

Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic, "When Multilevel Marketing Met Gen Z":

"She has more time and wealth than she knows what to do with—and so now she will pause to bathe an elephant. Wait a minute, you say to yourself. Could this be my life too?"

When I moved to Tugun four years ago we paid half what is now marketed as "Tugun's most affordable home" ... what a time to be alive.

Georgia O’Keeffe //

"I said to myself, 'I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me…shapes and ideas so near to me…so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down.' I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught."

Before he became CEO of the Trump campaign Steve Bannon made his living selling virtual gold on the Internet ... Bannon managed to convince Goldman Sachs to plow $60 million into imaginary goods in an imaginary world.

I think about this a lot

James Clear:

“When considering a new project or opportunity, one of the first questions to ask is, “How do I want to spend my days?”

C. S. Lewis in a letter to a young fan:

Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

Via Letters of Note

How Telegram Became the Anti-Facebook, Darren Loucaides:

"As I sat with him, I thought back to the conversation Zuckerberg and Durov allegedly had more than a decade ago. Both saw their nascent social networks as transcendent structures that would free communications from control by the state: governments and regulators reduced to the level of nuisances, rendered obsolete before the liberating force of a platform. Thinking this under a waning winter sun as my conversation with Telegram's VP concluded, I felt a chill."

How much are they paying for this myGov thing again? I got the notification email overnight, I've been anxious about it all day, finally got the guts to log in and find out what was wrong, and I owe them $0. Can I sue the ATO & myGov for anxiety inducement?

New data on how Americans drank themselves to death during the pandemic, by Christopher Ingraham

The Final Comeback of Axl Rose, by John Jeremiah Sullivan in 2006, referenced in the Rubesletter by Matt Ruby, today:

Axl has said, "I sing in five or six different voices that are all part of me. It's not contrived." I agree. One of them is an unexpectedly competent baritone. The most important of the voices, though, is Devil Woman. Devil Woman comes from a deeper part of Axl than do any of the other voices. Often she will not enter until nearer the end of a song. In fact, the dramatic conflict between Devil Woman and her sweet, melodic yang—the Axl who sings such lines as Her hair reminds me of a warm, safe place and If you want to love me, then darling, don't refrain and Sometimes I get so tense—is precisely what resulted in Guns N' Roses' greatest songs…

And what does she say, this Devil Woman? What does she always say, for that matter? Have you ever thought about it? I hadn't. "Sweet Child," "Paradise City," "November Rain," "Patience," they all come down to codas—Axl was a poet of the dark, unresolved coda—and to what do these codas themselves come down? Everybody needs somebody. Don't you think that you need someone? I need you. Oh, I need you. Where do we go? Where do we go now? Where do we go? I wanna go. Oh, won't you please take me home?

Remember when (20 years ago) British Telecom tried to patent hyperlinks so that everyone who used the web would owe them?

Sitting next to a couple on a first date (over lunch at a kebab shop) and the poor girl is really trying to make this work. After about 30 seconds of silence she asks “so do you read books?”

He’s hesitant with an answer.

This is gruelling!!

Miles Davis:

"If you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad."

Sad to see that TED Talks are actually useless

One day I'm going to open a restaurant called Alice's Restaurant so that the three other Arlo Guthrie fans have somewhere to come and take photos for Instagram.

English writer and poet, D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930):

“The world fears a new experience more than anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences.”

If there was a 24/7 streaming channel of just Rhys Darby talking about things in his funny manner, you could just pump that directly into my brain.

Finally made it to Buzzfeed

Every cricket season I think about the couple I met with who didn’t book me because I didn’t know who the groom was.

I asked what he “did”, he said “play cricket”, to which I replied, no I mean like a career or a job.

He replied “I play cricket.”

Still don’t know who he was.

Also currently reading: On Reckoning by Amy Remeikis 📚

Currently reading: Things Hidden by Richard Rohr 📚

Chemical emitted by babies could make men more docile, women more aggressive:

The study provides “pretty convincing evidence that HEX can modulate aggression in humans in a sex-specific way,” says Dayu Lin

Yossi Ghinsberg is speaking to my Harcourts team today, this early statement about him reading books during school classes ignoring the teacher captured me all afternoon:

“No matter what you do, make a story out of it”

Then this one on dreaming:

“Nothing exists if you don’t imagine it first”

Readers and viewers aren’t dumb, via The Why Axis email.

I’ll probably do your wedding for free if you walk down the aisle to Goldfinger’s cover of 99 Red Balloons.

Thinking about Citipointe Christian College in Brisbane this afternoon …

“Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them. Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people.

And don’t think you know it all!”

‭‭An excerpt from Romans‬ , chapter 12:14-16‬ from the New Living Translation.

Has Spotify had a deep clean yet? I’m staying out until everything on Spotify is 100% sanitised.

“You can do it like it’s a great weight, or you can do it like it’s part of the dance.”

– Ram Dass

The year is 2034 and your 12 y/o is getting ready for school. She starts the day with classes on empathy and then human connection. After lunch she has class on using social media to diagnose mental health concerns, and finishes with a class on post-algorithmic living.

Any other old school nerds ever just feel like re-visiting astalavista dot box dot sk?

Are you even from Brisbane if you don’t come to the Gold Coast on a long weekend and arrogantly proclaim to your partner that (insert beach suburb name) has really come into it’s own.

Notice how we keep on hearing from people who claim to be silenced?

Jen Ortiz, The Cut on weed's last taboo, pregnancy:

Those bong rips did the trick: “I fucking thrived after I felt better. I had the best pregnancy — like, glowing.”

What If We Just Stopped Being So Available?

Whites Beach, New South Wales

Please print this TikTok and put it on your bedroom walls

Gm Byron Bay 👋💪

Wategos Beach for sunrise this morning

"When rain falls, it flows downhill. If desired, you can collect the rain in a bucket and carry it uphill, but the natural tendency of water is to flow toward the lowest point.

Most situations in life have a tendency—a direction in which things want to flow. You can choose to go against the flow (just as you can choose to carry water uphill), but your results tend to be better when you find a way to work with the gradient of the situation.

Position yourself to benefit from the external forces at hand and you will get more from the same unit of effort. Energy is conserved and results are multiplied."

— James Clear

Name a banger more bangish than Orgy’s Blue Monday. I’ll wait.

What which craft is this? Surfing without waves!? #witchcraft #byronbay #wategosbeach #surfing

If you’re interested in joining my new rectangle scheme we just give each other the same amount of money for doing nothing. Plus we get name badges.

You know how we’d all hate a guy who annually celebrated the anniversary of that time he raped someone. Now think about January 26.

Why Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car, Timothy B Lee:

"It’s one of the most important economic mysteries of the modern world. While the material things in life are cheaper than ever, labor-intensive services are getting more and more expensive. Middle-class Americans today have little trouble affording a car, but they struggle to afford a spot in day care."